


A Journey Under the World

by RichGayAunt



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Sappho - Freeform, Underworld, acheron - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:08:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23830591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RichGayAunt/pseuds/RichGayAunt
Summary: Lilith is confronted with her own desires in the wake of her returning to Pandemonium. She is pulled out of her time to speak with an old friend who sets her on a path across the underworld to find divinity.
Relationships: Mary Wardwell | Madam Satan | Lilith & Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	A Journey Under the World

The fire crackled and hissed behind Lilith as she sat at her table strewn with tomes and manuscripts from across the centuries. Her eyes wandered the papers, unfocused and tired. Another day of working on this political campaign. She scowled and ran a hand across her face. Here she was, the All-But-Queen, still tied and bound to a throne that never seemed to invite her to sit in it. Using her millennia of knowledge to prop up a child claimant against a clay doll Adonis. The weaponized girl couldn't focus for one minute, forcing Lilith to step in if only to save her own hide from Lucifer--just thinking the name made something small shudder in her soul.

_"You are my Regent, no? You rule in my stead. Your word is mine," It felt good when Sabrina ingenuously said that, casually passing all the power of Hell into Lilith's eager, waiting grasp._

And all the work.

Lilith rubbed her face harder, eyes shut. Since claiming this comely form and inhabiting the mortal world again, she had grown used to the pleasures of sleep and hunger, even as these feelings were a double edged sword bringing regular intervals of weakness. Now that she was holed up in her chambers of Pandemonium, researching tactics and methods to finally wrench power from unsavory challengers and solidify herself as both Left and Right hands of Sabrina, she felt these pleasures fade more with each passing day.

She now consumed meat and drink as a passing ritual, not a need. Sleep's charm slid away from her, turning slowly back into extended meditations done only when she wished to reorganize her mind. All pleasures were becoming orderly; even her sexuality, so spiked and flushed when she walked the world in Mary Wardwell's body, became an ordered ritual, serving some preordained purpose with only shadows left of that upper-sphere delight and carnality.

But as her head throbbed and eyes burned, Lilith felt human comfort in leaning forward in her chair, pillowing her head on folded arms. She hadn't given up this plagiarized body since coming to Hell, so her black mane spilled around her in a shroud. Her breathing slowed as she quieted her thoughts. No one would disturb her warded and guarded chambers. Her mind wandered.

She pulled away from the question at hand of the half-breed child seeking ways to fully claim her throne. Her mind's eye traveled out of the stifling room. Fire and the glow of Pandemonium faded to a dull nothingness as she floated away. From a distance she heard faint voices calling her name. Lilith drifted closer and she heard a fervent prayer echoing across the spheres. One voice came into focus, the passionate call of Zelda Spellman as she led her flock. 

Zelda's voice, amplified by the energetic, stumbling prayers of the others, held her. Lilith felt a power rippling under her skin in this void as that familiar voice kept speaking to her, invoking her name with coltish fear and desire. Lilith reached out, somehow, with her formless form, stretching out towards that musical voice as the vibrating power crackled out. Black nothingness overtook her.

A cool breeze ran its fingers through Lilith's hair, sending a chill rippling across her skin. Sensation came into focus. She was firmly /somewhere./ The papers under her arms now felt solid and cold. Her nose scented sandstone and moss. A river flowed past, somewhere near. A woman softly singing made her eyes snap open. Assessing her body to see if she was free from charms and enchantments, Lilith lifted her head.

No longer in her hot study or that liminal nowhere, she was on the shores of some blessed river that wound slowly past her. Reeds and lush trees dotted the pebbled shore and yellow cliffs rose up and away to various heights. The sky was blue and the air, crisp. Sunlight poured down warm and golden, though Lilith couldn't see the source. Lilith leaned back from the stone altar she woke up on, and her back fit into the carved stone throne that replaced her chair. The singing woman came out from a tangle of brush to face Lilith, and she saw that it was not Zelda as she hoped but rather a stranger.

"Thank you, my dear." The other woman spoke, sauntering toward Lilith. She was clad in a purple robe tied with a white cord about her waist. Shoeless, she delicately stepped across the pebbles with a red amphora tucked under one of her arms. "You came, and you did well to come."

The familiarity of her voice pierced through Lilith's lingering sleep. 

"Who are you to bring me here?" Lilith said with an eyebrow raised, haughty and masking her confusion behind irritation. The wandering woman laughed and shook her head, her long black tangle of curls glittering in the not-sun. 

"You ask questions of me, sweet love, when the answers lives in your own desire." She tapped her chest. Lilith felt the tapping on her own sternum and narrowed her eyes, recognition itching at the back of her brain. The purple woman approached Lilith, placing the jar on the altar delicately. A sweet heady aroma of wine wafted from the open top, causing Lilith to immediately crave what rested inside. She licked her lips involuntarily before returning her gaze to the woman's lovely face.

"Sweet love, Lilith, don't you remember the many garlands of violets and roses I wove into your hair? The myrrh, bountiful upon your bed where we would lay with the stars coming out to watch us?" The woman laughed again as recognition ripped through Lilith's last remnants of slumber in a sharp gasp. 

"Sappho, I never forgot. I--" 

"No, no my dear. I loved many before and many since. It is so good to see you here." Sappho reached out a hand to tenderly caress Lilith's cheek. Her thumb lightly traced Lilith's lips. It was a gesture she knew in her bones, and it sent fresh electricity through ancient, rusted wires. She felt a stirring in her borrowed body, a skip in her heart.

"Why are you here? This is... Hell." Lilith whispered quietly as if someone would overhear them. _Not that it matters,_ somewhere in her brain called out, _You're the one in charge, right?_ Her worry belied the truth of that feeling. It seemed that things were not hers till they were firmly dead and beaten in her image.

"To some, in some places, it can be, as you know. But here--these are the shores of Acheron and I am gifted with resting beneath the trees and eating their soft fruits." Sappho stared down at Lilith, sizing up the black velvet dress she was wearing with thread-of-gold woven in as accent. Lilith felt her dark eyes wander her courtly dress and across her body as sharply as if her hands had done the looking.

"The real question is, do you know why are you here?" Sappho moved her hand away from Lilith's face to tug gently on a lock of hair. Lilith swayed as if that light touch was her sole support. She shook her head, the thought fuzzy despite herself.

"Truly? Has no one called out to you in need? Have you never felt the aching pain of power melting like wax out of your hands?"

"I want what is mine." Lilith heard the echo of Zelda's prayer to her in her mind. She was calling out with desperation and rapture at the prospect of a new god, a god that understood her in every intimate sense of the word. The horrible snap of the whip by everyone around her as she tested the edges of her cage. Sappho tugged the lock hard, breaking the reverie. Lilith balked at the sharpness while the purple woman took hold of the amphore. She lifted it and took a deep drink from it. 

"You must have it." Sappho gasped with laughter after finishing her heavy gulp. She offered the jar to Lilith. 

"Drink, and know that it is good." 

Parched worse than she had ever been before, Lilith greedily upended the amphora and tasted sweet wine that tingled like fire in her mouth. The drink settled in her stomach, a hot coal.

Sappho grabbed the vessel and gleefully dashed it on the stones with a shriek. The remaining wine splashed like black blood and trickled down toward Acheron. 

"Come, my queen of the beautiful Acheron, you must be hungry after so long without food." Sappho made a flourishing bow and pulled Lilith to her feet. They walked together, arms linked. Lilith felt the wine glow in her blood, thrumming. The cool breeze soothed her hot skin and rustled the greenery they walked past.

"It's curious that Lucifer Morningstar has not claimed this land for Himself," Lilith spoke, that name passing her lips without a wince from anywhere in her psyche. Rocks and jar fragments crunched beneath her slippered feet. She clung to Sappho for support, feeling somehow drunk yet also certain that she would float away.

"Oh he has tried, your lying man. These waters are more ancient than he and with greater purpose. A small man like that cannot hope to turn Acheron against itself." Sappho said with great conviction. Lilith looked down at her companion, thoroughly unused to the casual disregard for Satan. 

"I doubt that he's ever set foot here himself without grave consequences. At least, not since I have come." Lilith held on tightly as they stopped before an ancient tree bent over the water, heavy with pink, ripe fruit. Her stomach growled--she was famished, so much so that she felt her knees quake for a moment and her vision falter.

A soft involuntary whine escaped Lilith's mouth as Sappho peeled away, reaching for the tree. The short woman bounced to grab a branch before plucking off two fruits. Whispering an ancient prayer that tickled Lilith's memory, Sappho turned back to Lilith.

"Eat, and know the fullness of your desire." Sappho intoned, offering the fruit with a bowed head. The hunger seized Lilith and she took a bite, juice soaking her chin. Sappho joined her and they ate like children of the delicious fruit. Left with a shriveled pit, Sappho spat it into Acheron. She carefully watched Lilith as she did the same. 

"Come, my goddess of night, follow me to Acheron's embrace." Sappho tugged Lilith's hand, walking toward the water. It was a slow, wide river with fish shimmering beneath the clear surface. With each step into the water it rose steadily up around their hips. 

"Before I came here, they were praying to me," Lilith said quietly. The sweet fruit satisfied all her former hungers, both known and secret. Her mind felt loose. "Whispering my name on their knees in their hour of need. And it felt so good." 

When they found the center of Acheron, Sappho halted and turned back to her. Still holding Lilith's hand, Sappho began to kiss each knuckle tenderly. She turned over her hand and kissed her palm. 

"I have been prayed to before, you know that. Empty words that never reached me." Lilith gripped Sappho's cheek, tilting her head up to look into those dark, familiar eyes. "But this time, Sappho. This time it felt real." The heat of the fruit bored its way down through her abdomen, filling her now with a burning heat in her loins despite the cool, swirling water around them. A idle thought brushed her mind that she was thankful for Acheron being so cold that day.

"Is this what you desire?" Sappho purred, her hands taking hold of Lilith's hips to bring her closer. The golden heat flickered through Lilith's body and she hungrily pulled Sappho in for a kiss. She buried her hands in the mass of black curls, her grip tight and commanding. She felt the urgent need to consume the Poetess and her body quivered at Sappho's hands tracing well-trod paths across her aching thighs. 

Lilith pulled away, breathing in sharply. Catching her breath, she felt lingering sensation of that greedy kiss blossom over her skin. 

"I take that as a yes." Sappho laughed her gentle laugh and simply held Lilith. As Sappho looked up at her, Lilith could feel a change come over her senses. It was like the thinnest gossamer veil was being gingerly pulled aside to reveal--

"Why are we here?" Lilith asked quietly. Sappho studied her blue eyes, taking a moment to consider how to say what she was tasked to say.

"Your women who still walk the Earth have called to you, Lilith. They need you to wake up and become. Aphrodite revealed to me that you will face great challenges as you walk ahead towards your desire." Sappho held Lilith's gaze, her voice gentle but wholly serious.

"You must wake up to who you are and bloom like the golden flowers I tended back in our time. Follow the moon as she walks through the night and you will find the bridge to the next shore, sweet Lilith."

"Seeing you like this, even for a second--" Lilith cried out in Sappho's own words as the river grew in strength and pulled her feet out from under her. 

Acheron's cold embrace dragged her down. Sappho was gone. Everything became dark and Lilith was floating in her meditative slumber. Back in non-existence. 

"Praise Lilith, unholy mother of us all." Zelda's voice called out to her, ringing in her ears as it came into focus. It echoed and reverberated in the passing nothingness. The fruit and wine and tender kiss anchored Lilith as she sped past the voice of her favored one. 

The darkness snapped away. Lilith sat upright, hands gripping the edge of her table. Her chest was heaving and she was cold with sweat. Her mind raced and the concerns of Pandemonium remained distant as the significance of sojourn came into focus.

She ran her hands across her borrowed body, making sure she was all there. Her ears rang and on her lips Lilith could only taste sweetness.

**Author's Note:**

> Pretty sure this fits snugly into the part 3 timeline. If not, woopsies :) I am planning on at least 3 trials for our newly baptized Lilith to go through. Next up will be her crossing the Chinvat bridge. I've never used this platform before and have tended to keep my writing to myself so please let me know what you think.


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